One Shell of a Find!

Treasure Hunt!

Life’s a Beach! What will you find on yours?

From old Spanish coins to shark teeth to beach glass to seashells, every beach has treasures to make it special. The beach's treasures might even be the gorgeous views or spectacular sunsets! We at Beach Treasures and Treasure Beaches love to explore, and we would be thrilled if you would join us on our treasure hunts.

Archive for the ‘Decorating With Beach Treasures’ Category

You may have enjoyed many trips to the sandy shoreline without bringing home any treasured seashells. Me too! Sometimes there just aren’t any seashells to be found. Other times the seashells that are sparsely scattered about the beach are only broken bits of their former glory.

No seashells? No problem! Just bring home the real estate! We have found some beautiful beaches made up of tiny black pebbles (Yachats, Oregon comes to mind). Other beaches, especially along Northern California’s coast, are streaked with rivers of colorful, tumbled stones and agates. These lovely beach treasures can be turned into a striking display when you get them back home.

Colorful Northern California Beach Stones on Display

Tiny fragments of seashells or coral can easily be substituted for these multicolored beach treasures. With or without a candle, this is a beautiful, memory-filled decoration. As you can see below, we have our candle dish of wave polished stones displayed right next to a pitcher full of sea tumbled glass, ceramic, and seashells we found at Fort Bragg, California many, many moons ago.

Sea Glass and Beach Stones. A Lovely Combination.

There’s something very zen about running your fingers through a bowl full of tiny, smooth beach gems. Beautiful colors and shapes just keep rising to the top. Try it. You’ll like it!😉

How do you decorate with beach treasures? We’d love for you to share your ideas and photos with us. Please join in and send your photos and descriptions to oneshellofafind@gmail.com, and we’ll happily show them off for you!

Note: I bought the children’s size 10 flip flops because I wanted to be able to have a reasonable sized wreath with 8 shoes in 4 colors. Of course, you can mix it up for your own taste and/or occasion! Think of how great this would be in red, white, and blue for a…

Greg and I spotted this beautiful shades-of-the-sea Christmas tree at the Hotel del Coronado in sunny Southern California. It was tucked away near the downstairs shops by a little snack bar. I’m so glad we went exploring! This fabulous Christmas tree was chock-full of wonderful ideas for a very crafty new year!

Note: I bought the children’s size 10 flip flops because I wanted to be able to have a reasonable sized wreath with 8 shoes in 4 colors. Of course, you can mix it up for your own taste and/or occasion! Think of how great this would be in red, white, and blue for a backyard 4th of July party! Final material cost: only $6.00 from the nearby dollar store.

First, Greg and I placed the flip flops on the floor in various overlapping configurations. We determined that we would need to reverse the direction of the left-foot flip flops so they would come around in a circular fashion (toe facing inside the circle). Basically, once you lay your flip flops out, you’ll find the pattern that’s right for you.

Inserting flower wire through toe post hole with needle nose pliers

After we finalized our wreath pattern, we started construction by pushing a single flower wire through the toe post hole of the top (overlapping) flip flop and continued to push through the lower flip flop so that the top shoe was anchored to the bottom one. In some cases we did not use the toe post, but instead pushed the flower through the heal of the top shoe first (this happened when we reversed the shoe order for the left-foot flip flops).

Inserting flower wire through toe post hole

Pulling flower wire through flip flop with needle nose pliers

We pulled the wire flower stem through the bottom flip flop using needle nose pliers and bent the wires over on the bottom side to hold the flip flops in place. Then, we continued around in a circular pattern until they were all connected into the shape of a wreath.

Bending flower wire into place

We shaped one wire flower stem into a hook for hanging.

Bottom of Wreath

Once we had our wreath together, we made sure to push all of the shoes and flowers into the shape we wanted. We cemented the Flip Flop Wreath into its final form using hot glue.

Here’s a quick and easy idea for family-time creativity and crafting! Seashell Christmas angels and carolers are just perfect for the Fraser Fir, and they’ll add seaside style when hung on drawer pulls and cabinet knobs for the rest of the year!

Elisa and I had a blast last week putting these little seashell Christmas angel and caroler ornaments together.

Hairdos and faces were drawn on some of the wooden beads with permanent markers. A few of the angels have glitter glue painted on their seashell skirts. Buttons were used as hats. Halos and arms were made from pipe cleaners. We made our angels’ wings by simply looping the ribbon around a hand a few times and tying the center with a knot.
Just to be sure, a few the of the seashell ornaments were stabilized by hot gluing buttons to the backs of the figures (where the seashells met).

There we have it: festive, fun seashell Christmas ornaments and year-round seashore keepsakes!

Here are a few more ideas for using your beach treasures as Christmas tree ornaments:

Aloha, all! Jody came to the conclusion recently that it was high time we had a easy seashell craft post, and I quite agree. So, while she sets to work on a very spiffy bit of beachy embroidery (embellished with beach treasures, of course!), I have decided to make wallflowers. “What do wallflowers have to do with the beach?” you might ask, and it is a perfectly valid question. The answer is: I made framed and matted seashell wall hangings out of Jody and Greg’s Sanibel Island, Florida beachcombing finds. I arranged the seashells in the shape of flowers.

This was a delightfully easy process that I’m sure any person with a lot of seashells on his or her hands could manage. What you’ll need, if you’re planning to do this project yourself, is a nice frame, some card-stock or matting, seashells, and a hot glue gun.

For my first seashell wallflower, I used two pieces of matting with ovals cut out of the middle and a bit of natural-looking brown paper in a nice, dark brown frame. Check it out!

Wallflower Number 1 (craft and photo by E.G.D.)

For this one, I used a lightning whelk as a sort of vase or base for the seashell flowerarrangement. Shell fragments made for quite shiny and metallic-looking leaves, and some conch shells made for flower petals. I think the middle of the flower is a shark eye snail shell. Please bear in mind that ANY of these shells can be substituted by whatever you happen to have in your collection. Case in point, here’s the second seashell flower arrangement I put together:

Wallflower Number 2 (craft and photo by E.G.D.)

This is set in a dollar-store (Daiso 100-yen store, actually) photo frame I bought a long time ago in Japan. The background is a recycled, folded greeting card envelope. Notice that the effect is more or less the same as my first project, but none of the seashells are the same! That’s the great thing about such a simple craft. No two of your seashell flower wall hangings will ever be the same! I was thinking that a whole series of these would look great on a bathroom wall, and really, these would make for amazingly thoughtful and low-cost holiday gifts for those of you who are looking to go D.I.Y. with your gifting this year. Alternately, if you substituted white glue for the hot glue, this would be a great easy seashell craft for the whole family to enjoy. My little niece and nephew always have a ball doing this sort of thing.

So, happy seashell crafting, everyone! Rather than link the above images to the store (our usual policy for our copyrighted images), I left them linked to significantly larger versions of the images. Please feel free to use them as a reference, but please don’t use them for anything else without writing to us and asking for permission. If you have any questions, or if you’d like to share your thoughts on this project, please leave a comment! We’d love to hear from you. – E.G.D.

When I stumbled upon Jody’s blog (or maybe it was vice versa) I thought how fun it would be to submit a craft project for beach treasures that I was in the process of doing. I also thought it would give me the push (read shove) to finish it!

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

So, I have a series of pictures to accompany the steps. Even though I purchased this frame at Pier One, it would be incredibly easy to make. The frame is 1 ¼ thick, 21” tall, 18” wide. The wire could be replicated by using wire coat hangers (remember those?). You can paint the frame any color you like, even to compliment or contrast your décor. Consider what I will be showing you as something similar to a basic cookie dough recipe. You can change it up any way you want!

I actually got two frames from Pier One for 50% off each. They were marked down because the little clothes pins had been lost. I simply went to a craft store, purchased a bag of small pins and painted them the colors I wanted.

Then I sat looking at the frames for a long time wondering what in the heck I was going to do with them. My initial thought was B&W photos, but I don’t really have any of those and I don’t want vintage ones of people I don’t know! So I finally settled on beach treasures. Lord knows I have enough of them around the house. But after I fixed up the clothes pins and attached the shells and things, it looked so blah. That was when I came up with idea for a three dimensional look.

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

What I really want is a vintage map of Point Reyes Beach, Sir Francis Drake Beach, etc. These maps can run high ($$$), so my girlfriend found something else for me. She says this is drawer liner (very nice weight). Subsequently, I decided to give that a try for now. The other thing I needed was something for the front of the frame. I found vintage, used fishing net (not fishy), for a really great price on e-Bay (what can’t you find on e-Bay?). I’m all set, ready?

3D Picture Frame(s)

The frames measure 21” T x 18” x W 1 ¼” thick. I would imagine that any width of wood would work, and you can make it whatever size you need. For informational purposes, these frames have 9 slots (for want of a better word). The wire used is approximately the thickness of a wire hanger, perhaps a bit thicker, but it is really not necessary to go that thick.

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

1. First thing I did was go to the craft store for those clothes pins. Then I painted them. As you can see from the finished picture – I can’t count – I left one out!

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

2. The next thing I did was play around with the beach treasures. Some things were too heavy, some things hung funny, some things looked funny and I wanted a mix of sizes, shapes and objects.

3. I attached the painted, dried, pins. I noticed this could be done a couple of ways and am still playing around with that. Then I got my supplies in order: beach treasures, backing, netting, tape and staple gun.

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

4. I played around with the layout of the map (backing) versus the placement of the treasures for maximum effect.

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

5. I marked where I needed to cut the backing and then temporarily taped it to the frame. This way I can make sure it is straight, before I staple gun it to the frame.

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

6. Depending upon how I want the net, I may attach the treasures first, then place the net on top or work the net into some of the treasures so things look tangled. Still playing with that idea.

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

7. Finished (almost) look! Lots of fun and I am getting ready to do my second frame!

Photo by KK @ KnowledgeKnut

Jody’s note: Wow! What a creative way to display and decorate with beach treasures! Wouldn’t this be the perfect gift for the beach enthusiast on your list? Imagine the possibilities.

KK, thank you so much for sharing your amazing creativity with us!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About KK:Just this week, I made my acting debut at Stage 3 in Sonora, in the production of Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon. I also recently did a radio show on breast cancer, attended an awesome, local, empowerment retreat , am creating a very popular blog, wrote an article for my local paper, The Union Democrat, and am working on publishing my first book. My curiosity is boundless, which has led me on a very interesting life path. Let me show you.

I currently hold degrees or certificates in the following fields: Master Gardener; Educational Therapist Certification (well almost); Foundation Certificate in Gemmology (Great Britain); BA in Law Studies; Paralegal Certificate; AA in Language & Literature and; Gourmet Cooking & Catering Certificate. I speak 6 languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Farsi), some of them very poorly, but at least I can find the restroom!

Please come visit me, I can promise to put a smile on your face, or maybe even make you laugh. You may stumble across one of my “thinking” posts or may simply be entertained by the photography. Either way, I promise it will be fun!

Have you seen those fun little desktop zen gardens? Well, here’s a do-it-yourself idea for us beach lovers: a desktop mini zen beach!

I actually looked for these little desktop beach kits online and considered buying one, but then realized that I’d rather personalize my own little zen beach. It’s so easy and lots of fun to put one of these mini beach sets together.

For the base, I used an old picture frame with a 6×6 photo opening. Taking the backing off and removing the glass, I cut a piece of a vinyl placemat to size and glued it into the opening. I packed the cardboard squares back into the frame (behind the place mat) and secured the back with the same slip-proof matting. Since I used a blue placemat, I kept cutting and made some surf for the beach, too.

Use your imagination and personalize your own mini zen beach! Sterilized, decorative sand is available at your local craft store. I chose the color of the golden sands of Southern California’s coastline. You may decide on black for the famous black sand beaches of the Big Island, pink to remind you of that amazing trip to the Bahamas, or white sand for the pristine shores of Barbados.

Do-It-Yourself Mini Zen Beach with Sand Castle Christmas Ornament

A sand pail and shovel are the real key here. Little seashells on the beach are a must, in my book. The rest is up to your unlimited creativity.

I used my miniature seashells from Sanibel Island, Florida. The little pieces of “sea glass” are oven baked, tiny plastic pellets used for “stained glass” Christmas ornaments and sun catchers. A button makes a great little umbrella stand. For mini beachy accessories, head to the toy department, the kids’ Barbie bins or their play room! Find what makes your own desktop beach “zen.” I found the perfect beach themed doll set at a discount store (she looks just like me). From then on, it was a blast to set up these beach scenes!

Do-It-Yourself Desktop Zen Beach

Do-It-Yourself Desktop Zen Beach (She looks just like me!)

This desktop addition is sure to help you beat those Monday morning blues! Have fun, change it up, and try to get some work done!😉